"The duty of washing before
meat is not inculcated in the law, but only in the tradition of the
scribes. So rigidly did the Jews observe it, that Rabbi Akiba, being
imprisoned, and having water scarcely sufficient to sustain life
given him, preferred dying of thirst to eating without washing his
hands."

"What is from within and who does it reveal? This is the question -- for you, for your sermon, for all those in whom we lodge trust or in whom we long to hope. And, in the end -- and herein lies the promise -- it is the question answered by God."

"It may seem strange to people raised on the gospel of grace to hear about observing the commandments. But the simple truth is that the biblical witness has always insisted that the way you live your life demonstrates the quality of your faith."

"What seems to have made him angriest was hypocrisy and irrelevance, and thus it is the Pharisees who come in for his strongest attacks, the good people who should have known better. 'You brood of vipers,' he called them. 'How can you speak good when you are evil?'"

Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours,
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15-, 21-23, David Ewart, 2012.

"The struggle that every community in every age faces - including our own - is how can the 'tradition of the elders,' which has given us our identity, now be changed so that what was good in it - the desire live according to the will of God - can actually be expressed in our current circumstances."

"My plea earlier was that you begin your sermon
prep by asking, "What are God's specific gracious remedies to our
defilement?" Perhaps a starting place is to rejoice that God creates
in us new hearts and right spirits within us."

"Jesus gave his disciples authority over unclean
spirits, too (Mark 6:7), and so we are sent out to handle what is
unclean with Jesus' cleansing life. Will we be defiled in the
process? Absolutely. But we know what to do with that; it goes with
Jesus to the cross to get sanitized in his risen life for us and for
others."

"The precise difference between Jesus and the Pharisees
was that they looked at the external activity whereas Jesus looked at the
heart, the source of activity. They looked to the fulfillment of law and
tradition while he looked to love and commitment. They looked at the
letter of the law while he looked at it's spirit."

"Since the purpose of God's law
was not to separate covenant from non-covenant members but to gather all peoples in God's
mysterious election, the particularistic kosher laws are judged abrogated. And so the
issue of clean/unclean in Mark 7 may be focused on the question of washing hands and
vessels, but these are but symbols of the larger discussion of purity and
pollution."

"How
can readers understand the particular ceremony of meals and table fellowship? Why are
meals so important as symbols of broader social relationships? How can we peer below the
surface and grasp the social dynamics encoded in meals and commensality, what
anthropologists call "the language of meals"?"

"The Well-Loved Traditions," a hymn by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, lifting up Jesus' teaching on traditions and our need to focus on what is inside rather than outward appearances. Tune: ST. DENIO 11. 11. 11. 11 ("Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise").